Chapter 5

Before her time in the hospital she had arranged for a childless friend
and her husband to take her daughter if anything should happen. This
little girl had grown up with me. She knew me and loved me. I loved her.
It was that alone that kept me agreeing that a couple, not a devastated
single man, should take care of her. She constantly questioned that
decision. I had to keep reassuring her that she was right in her decision
on where to send her daughter. They were the most difficult conversations
I've ever had with her. I'm fairly certain the conversations are almost
unique. I can't imagine there are very many single parents in the position
she was in with a boyfriend (or more?) that's been with them and their
children as long as I was with her and her daughter. Especially in the
situation where there was no biological father around to take care of the
child and the grandparents were simply not in a position to have a
pre-teen -- growing in to teen -- granddaughter full time.

She was now convinced she was going to die before too long, despite the
good prognosis the doctors gave her. This lead to great many changes. The
principle one that effected me was her decision to break off our
relationship. She never said as much, but it was clear that she meant to
protect me. She never realized it wouldn't work. I wouldn't stop loving
her, even if she did die. I couldn't. I never would. If she died, I would
be exactly as heart broken as if we had never broken up.

Continue reading Chapter 6.

In the first year after Her death Her daughter wrote a poem. I didn't immediately get a copy of it. It's a very moving poem that could have been published. At some point I hope to be able to post it here, but first I'll have to get permission. However, I did get her permission to give it to the girl whose friend died a year ago. Today I was finally able to do that. Everytime I even look at the poem I start tearing up. Before I gave it to the young girl I wanted her mother's permission to make sure sure she was ok with her daughter getting a poem about a mother dying. She started reading it and almost immediately stopped saying "I can't read this now." I can only hope this helps her understand that with all the issues she's dealt with, there others who've dealt with exactly the same.

Chapter 4

Now starts the second treatment for breast cancer. She gets scheduled for
a full mastectomy and some chemo. The Clinic she's at has a ward
specially designed for foreign dignitaries; Arabian princes and the like.
Her doctor is a smart one and works it out that his mastectomy patients
go there for recovery. It makes them feel a little better to recover in
what is essentially a high class hotel with rich wooden furniture and
nicely carpeted floors. After that the weekly chemo starts. This, of
course, leads to a few days of throwing up and generally feeling crappy.
Some of those weeks I get to help her out and take care of her and her
daughter. Saying I do this happily would be wrong, but I am happier than
if someone else were doing it. At least I'm with them.

Her boss is a great guy and arranges for many things for her. During the
treatments she gets long term disability. In the few months between the
different treatements she gets to work from home most days. Even with
this she can't afford to live on her own anymore and so moves back in
with her parents. A decision I don't like, but not one I can do anything
about. In the end, it turns out to be a fairly good thing. She gets
scheduled for a stem cell transplant and her retired parents are in a
better position to take care of her daughter than I am for the time
being.

Now, for those of you not familiar with a stem cell transplant, here's how
it works. First, they take suck some of your own stem cells out of you and
freeze them. That's the easy part. Then they stick you in a virtually
sterile room as they give you very high dosages of chemotherapy. Since
chemo is really just a poison, it ends up pretty much killing everything
inside you, including your immune system, hence the sterile environment.
Finally they give you your stem cells back and wait about a month until
they get back to doing their job of giving you an immune system.

Even now I still can't imagine spending an entire month confined in a
sterile room despite my at least daily visits. There were good days when
she was awake and active. I would bring a few movies to watch or a game
to play. Other days she was extremely lethargic and could barely greet
me. Those days afforded me much reading time. On her more active days
she would try to insist that I not show up. "I don't want you to see me
like this," she would tell me. I always ignored those requests. She
admitted to me much later that despite her insistance, she was always
happy to see me and looked forward to my visits.

Having been a long distance runner her entire life, her heart rate and
blood pressure were rather low to begin with. I remember a many days I
was there when the nurse would come in to check vitals and would go to
start the blood pressure check a second time and I would just say "No, it
really is that low." There were definately days the nurses wondered how
she was living. She spent much of the time on an oxygen feed. Her month
in the sterile room ended a little bit early when she had congestive
heart failure and she was transferred to the cardiac ward for a few more
weeks. Daily visits continued.

Continue reading Chapter 5.

So, I spent much of the day with the daughter today. She's finishing her first year in high school and made honor roll. I'm so proud of that girl. She's playing JV softball, but is a designated runner for the Varsity catcher. She takes after her mother, she was a distance runner. The girl doesn't like that quite as much, but has incredible running talent. I wish I could convince her to try out for track and field as a sprinter. But, alas. . .

Leaving her after a visit is possibly more painful than the loss of her mother. I absolutely love being with her. She's everything her mother was. Ending the visit feels like the funeral every time. And, even if it was fair to her that I never see her again, I couldn't possibly do it.

Chapter 3

Eventually she and her daughter moved out of her parent's house into an
apartment. Her daughter started school. By this time, I was not only
ready to marry her, but to adopt her daughter. I already thought of her
as my own child. We discussed marriage. Fairly often, actually. The
discussions usually kind of petered off without a real resolution.

We went on a camping vacation. I was yelled at for not listening. She was
right; I realize now. But, part of her being mad at me was that I taught
her daughter to ride her bike. She was 6 and had the same athletic talent
as her mom, she should have been riding for several years. So, I figured
it's time she learned. Everytime I tried teaching her she would cry a
little and her mother would say "If she doesn't want to she doesn't have
to". I think the only reason she was reluctant was because she had once
taken a hard fall with her training wheels on. Well, falling is a part of
learning to ride. So, one morning before her mother got up we went for a
walk/ride. I steadied her as she rode. After a bit, I told her I was
going to let go and the crying started. I pointed to a bench 50 feet
ahead and said, "You're going to ride to that bench. Then if you want
we'll go back and you won't have to ride again." I gave her no choice. 50
feet of riding, no matter how much she cried. After just the 50 feet she
was ecstatic. In fact, for the rest of the week we couldn't get her off
her bike. She would just ride around the oval campground driveway.

This was simultaneously the worst and best thing I could have done. Her
mother was quite upset with me for going behind her back to teach her
daughter to ride. But, it's just what the little girl needed. I will
never stop feeling terrible and terribly happy about this event. Only
months later I was to remind the little girl of how much she didn't want
to start riding her bike and then how much fun it was afterwards when I
taught her to ski. It took her 3 runs down the bunny hill to learn. I
have never ever seen this kind of ability before or since.

Somewhere over the last few years I had grown comfortable with the little
girl and I had realized that I was indeed ready to be a father. So, here
I was ready to be married to the best most beautiful women, adopt her
wonderful daughter and have more children with her. But, life doesn't
follow our plans. She was again diagnosed with breast cancer.

Continue reading Chapter 4.

Chapter 2

8 months later.

I find out she's no longer dating that guy. Turns out he was rather a
nut. Not that big a surprise. But, now I'm on the hook for asking her
out, not an easy thing for one as shy as I. But, my buddies (thanks
buddies!) manage to wrangle her into going over to our local college bar
with us for some drinks. It works. We have a great time. I walk her to
her car. We almost get hit several times while standing there in a
prolonged kiss. I finally got up the nerve to ask her out on a real date
the next week.

Again, being as shy as I am first dates have always been rather awkward.
Even knowing that she really liked me -- woman rarely risks her life to
kiss a guy she doesn't like -- didn't help much. We went to the Improv
and had a great time. There was a second date, an even more unlikely
event for me. Then another and another.

It didn't take long at all to fall completely in love with her. How could
I not? She was gorgeous, smart, strong, independant, determined, ambitious
and liked Monty Python. She was a single mom doing a great job raising a
now 2 and a half year old daughter. The father wasn't around and never
would be. Even now I can't fathom how hard it must be to raise a child in
such conditions. Yet, she was doing wonderfully.

One weekend she had to cancel our date. Her daughter was in the hospital
with a particularly bad Rotavirus infection. I couldn't not see her
though. So I went to visit. I've never been a particularly child friendly
sight and at the time I had only exacerbated it with long hair and a big
trench coat. Me on a pediatric floor was a fairly amusing image. I sat
and talked with her and even joked about that. The little girl's young
roommate came waddling in, her parents close behind, stopped, looked at
me and let out a wail that reminded me of my childhood when my brother
took my favorite toy.

She never actually needed help with her classes, but I helped regardless.
Normally I hated helping people, as a natural in the subject I was asked
to help often. I never minded helping her, and usually looked for a
reason to. I was immensly happy just being near her.

At some time in that first year I found out that she had had breast
cancer as a result of her Hodgkin's radiation treatment and had a single
mastectomy. I had never thought about it before then, but she apparently
had expected me to be bothered by this. But, by then nothing about her
surprised me; much less bothered me. The very fact that she wasn't only
surviving, but thriving and improving herself made all these things make
me love her more.

Continue in Chapter 3.

The Whys of This. . .

Even though it should be pretty obvious now that the story ends with Her dying in 2001, you might be wondering why I'm writing this now. Over the past several years I've had a few additional experiences which have assured me of a few things.

The first is that no matter what, I will never actually get over her or this. Over beers with a married friend one night I brought her up again. He asked "You're never going to get over her?". I asked him "Would you ever get over your wife?" I'm not sure he really had thought about it before, but I saw the look in his eye as he said "No." The look behind his eyes was one I understood. The final bit of this realization actually happened a year and a half after She passed. My grandmother died. She was 93 and it wasn't an unexpected event. We went to the funeral. She was to be buried next to her daughter who died in the mid '60s of a bad case of pneumonia. It was in her first year of marriage. Her husband showed up at Grandma's funeral. It was a nice gesture. After everyone left, a few of us stuck around the grave to make sure things got wrapped up before we went for lunch. I turned around saw the husband (the man who would have been my uncle) break down and cry at his dead wife's grave. This was three and a half decades later. I now know exactly what I have to look forward to.

The second thing I realized is that I will always be meeting people with similar experiences. This was driven home this past fall. I essentially volunteer teaching 11 to 12 year old kids. This past fall I discovered that one of my students, a young one at 10, had recently lost her best friend to cancer.

It took a little too long to realize that is not something I will ever actually get over, but only something I can work to live with. But, now that I'm there, I'm going to share my probably unique story in the hope that it will help others to live with their losses.

Hello, My Introduction, and welcome to cancer.

Cancer. We all know the term. Just about everyone has a personal experience with it. Perhaps an aunt, uncle or friend of the family has had it. Some may have died, others survived. Regardless, almost all of us have a personal connection with the disease. In the last several decades advances in the treatment of the disease have progressed greatly. We've learned there are many chemicals that can kill off the diseased cells. We've learned that radiation can kill them. We've learned that we can give very very strong dosages of either under the right conditions. We've found many genes which can lead to cancer. We've found some ways to fight those genes.

And yet, all of us are touched by cancer. Some of us more than others. Every cancer story has survivors. In some instances it's those who have survived cancer. In some it's those who've watched those they love pass. What follows is my story. The ending should be pretty obvious already. But the end alone isn't enough. Read on.

----

My sister called. She had no idea about about her luck, I suspect she
wouldn't have called had she known. "She's," this was the first time I had
to say this. It didn't come out right away and not without tears, "She's dead."
That was only minutes after she had stopped breathing. The nurse hadn't
even shown up yet to declare her dead. Yes, I'm sure my sister wouldn't
have called at that moment had she known.

Spring quarter, 1993 - About 8 years earlier.

It was my 2nd time taking this class, which was rather annoying as it was
in my field and I was actually very good in the subject. The problem the
first time around is that it was an 8am class with a terrible professor
who was far too much of a baseball fan to actually get on topic. So, here
I sat, back in the corner as always. I hated being called on to answer
questions; I inevitably got them right and with more information than the
instructor wanted.

Even before the class began I could tell it was going to be a tedious one.
The instructor was not a full professor, barely spoke english and didn't
really know the material. Throughout the entire class I spent far too
much time correcting her, even from the back corner seat.

The only thing that kept me coming to the class was the hottie in the
opposite corner of the room. All the way on the left, 2nd row. Granted,
from my position pretty much all I could see was her hair and the
occasional profile when she looked up. But, that was enough for me, she
was gorgeous. Incredibly, unbelievably full long curly dark brown hair.
Beautiful profile. Cute button nose. She was dating someone. But, a
friend had talked to her at some point and mentioned me; her response
"Oh, that cutie back in the corner?".

Later that year, my student organization decided to honor her at our end
of year dinner. She had survived Hodgkin's disease about 13 years prior,
before even entering high school. The president of our organization had
lost his sister to the same disease. I learned a little more about her at
the dinner. She has a daughter, just over a year and a half old. She was
the most adorable little clone of her mother. This was her 2nd time
attending college, her previous degree wasn't going to help her get a good
job to support the little girl. She was still seeing that guy.

Continue reading Chapter 2.